pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Poll

How Much Has Your Income Dropped On iStock Since The Peak In 2012?

My iStock income hasn't dropped at all and I am an indepdendent
38 (18.4%)
My iStock income hasn't dropped at all and I am exclusive with iStock
4 (1.9%)
My iStock income has dropped by about 20% and I am an indepdendent
19 (9.2%)
My iStock income has dropped by about 20% and I am exclusive with iStock
11 (5.3%)
My iStock income has dropped by 50% or more and I am an indepdendent
56 (27.1%)
My iStock income has dropped by 50% or more and I am exclusive with iStock
32 (15.5%)
My iStock income is only about 20% left of what it was before and I am an indepdendent
5 (2.4%)
My iStock income is only about 20% left of what it was before and I am exclusive with iStock
8 (3.9%)
My iStock income is less than 20% of what it was before and I am an indepdendent
15 (7.2%)
My iStock income is less than 20% of what it was before and I am exclusive with iStock
8 (3.9%)
My iStock income has increased by 10% or more and I am an indepdendent
8 (3.9%)
My iStock income has increased by 10% or more and I am exclusive with iStock
3 (1.4%)

Total Members Voted: 199

Author Topic: How Much Has Your Income Dropped On iStock Since The Peak In 2012? - Poll!  (Read 30549 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

« Reply #50 on: June 06, 2016, 07:00 »
0
Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.
....
Not really. There's a minimum sales threshold to reach to become exclusive on IS. The people who's income has increased are the ones who had very small portfolios in 2012, in other words much more likely to be independents.

Yes, statistically these polls have all sorts of caveats - they're from a self-selected group, the answers are unverifiable, they aren't corrected for increases in the numbers of contributors and images, size of portfolio, level of expertise or activity and no doubt lots of other things.

They're fun, but I wouldn't go drawing any far reaching conclusions based on them... if you are thinking of dropping exclusivity (or indeed going exclusive), base it on your own figures and aims, not what anyone else might think is best!

All agreed. But when I put up this poll I had some theories as to why my own income on iStock has dropped so significantly. Yes, the poll results may be flawed for all the reasons you mentioned, but so far the poll results have matched my theories. Pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.


« Reply #51 on: June 06, 2016, 07:23 »
+1
Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.
....
Not really. There's a minimum sales threshold to reach to become exclusive on IS. The people who's income has increased are the ones who had very small portfolios in 2012, in other words much more likely to be independents.

Yes, statistically these polls have all sorts of caveats - they're from a self-selected group, the answers are unverifiable, they aren't corrected for increases in the numbers of contributors and images, size of portfolio, level of expertise or activity and no doubt lots of other things.

They're fun, but I wouldn't go drawing any far reaching conclusions based on them... if you are thinking of dropping exclusivity (or indeed going exclusive), base it on your own figures and aims, not what anyone else might think is best!

All agreed. But when I put up this poll I had some theories as to why my own income on iStock has dropped so significantly. Yes, the poll results may be flawed for all the reasons you mentioned, but so far the poll results have matched my theories. Pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

The poll, assuming it's at all accurate (and it doesn't seem outrageously out of order or anything) doesn't confirm any theories as to the causes of income drops - it just confirms that, for many people, there has been an income drop.  I think most contributors (based on posts in this forum and others) already knew that!

It's just a bit of fun.

« Reply #52 on: June 06, 2016, 07:37 »
+1
Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.
....
Not really. There's a minimum sales threshold to reach to become exclusive on IS. The people who's income has increased are the ones who had very small portfolios in 2012, in other words much more likely to be independents.

Yes, statistically these polls have all sorts of caveats - they're from a self-selected group, the answers are unverifiable, they aren't corrected for increases in the numbers of contributors and images, size of portfolio, level of expertise or activity and no doubt lots of other things.

They're fun, but I wouldn't go drawing any far reaching conclusions based on them... if you are thinking of dropping exclusivity (or indeed going exclusive), base it on your own figures and aims, not what anyone else might think is best!

All agreed. But when I put up this poll I had some theories as to why my own income on iStock has dropped so significantly. Yes, the poll results may be flawed for all the reasons you mentioned, but so far the poll results have matched my theories. Pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

The poll, assuming it's at all accurate (and it doesn't seem outrageously out of order or anything) doesn't confirm any theories as to the causes of income drops - it just confirms that, for many people, there has been an income drop.  I think most contributors (based on posts in this forum and others) already knew that!

It's just a bit of fun.

Agreed, it doesn't confirm theories as to cause of income drops. But it tells more than that there has been a drop in income. It also shows the following:

1 - Many indies have not seen a loss of income since 2012 versus almost all exclusives who have seen some loss of income.
2 - The majority of people who have had a loss on income have seen a loss of 50% or greater. 

If you find that to be just a bit of fun, then no problem. But I find that to be useful data that we did not have before.

« Reply #53 on: June 06, 2016, 08:13 »
+7
Mine dropped 100%  :P

« Reply #54 on: June 06, 2016, 08:31 »
+1
Mine dropped 100%  :P

I'll add an option for 100% drop on the next poll ;)

« Reply #55 on: June 06, 2016, 09:13 »
+3
...

Another thing I noticed over the last 18 months is how the best match on iStock hasn't really changed much at all. And what the best match mainly has been driving for the last 1.5 years is the newer content uploaded by exclusives and independents, plus some of the older stuff put up by exclusives which hasn't sold much in the past

...

The current best match algorithm is also not showing the older and best selling exclusive content at the top of the search results, which results in minimal sales to exclusives of their high quality best sellers from the past that they spent more money to create.

So what does this all really mean for contributors?

In my opinion it means that iStock is discouraging buyers from easily finding the more expensive, high quality exclusive content and instead putting a mix of new, lower quality and lower cost indy content, with some older, poorer selling exclusive content which isn't going to interest buyers much anyway.


I didn't vote because my portfolio is so small as to be microscopic. I stopped uploading in 2010 after whatever major debacle iStock caused that year and deactivated a significant number of images after the Google freebie event. I'm not contributing to microstock any more -- just letting the game play out to the end, which seems nigh.

Nevertheless, I had a handful of images that continued to sell quite well (as credit sales too) until the last year, when everything went off a cliff. Your comment above would perfectly explain why this happened. Unless best match changes to show older best-sellers again, I'm pretty much completely dead instead of just almost dead.

FWIW, I estimate earnings this year will be 9% of what I earned in 2012 and 3% of what I earned in 2010, the last year I uploaded -- losses of 91% and 97% respectively.

« Reply #56 on: June 06, 2016, 09:33 »
+2
Quote

Agreed, it doesn't confirm theories as to cause of income drops. But it tells more than that there has been a drop in income. It also shows the following:

1 - Many indies have not seen a loss of income since 2012 versus almost all exclusives who have seen some loss of income.
2 - The majority of people who have had a loss on income have seen a loss of 50% or greater. 

If you find that to be just a bit of fun, then no problem. But I find that to be useful data that we did not have before.

+1.

All in one, as we can read with votes already posted :
1. 75% of istock contributors have a drop in their sales (independent and exclusive)
2. Only 3% of exclusive has'nt dropped at all.

Just for curiosity, maybe you could have put also an item with 'My income has increased (by about x%) and I am an independent'...  ;)
 

« Reply #57 on: June 06, 2016, 09:50 »
+1
It is very obvious that Istock is not promoting exclusive files. Why pay 2.5$ /0.75$  if you can do with much less (same with credits), specially if there are similar files on both champs so the customer doesn't need to look elsewhere. Let me give you another hint on why quality doesn't matter at all for them. In my last uploads I had most images selected as regular exclusive files, some as E+ and some as Main.........guess which of them appear first when I look for my portfolio in Best Match........the bests with a big Plus sign on it.....wrong! Those selected as Main get to the front page before any sale that bumps them up and they also stay on the privileged position for longer......

« Reply #58 on: June 06, 2016, 10:01 »
+1
Quote

Agreed, it doesn't confirm theories as to cause of income drops. But it tells more than that there has been a drop in income. It also shows the following:

1 - Many indies have not seen a loss of income since 2012 versus almost all exclusives who have seen some loss of income.
2 - The majority of people who have had a loss on income have seen a loss of 50% or greater. 

If you find that to be just a bit of fun, then no problem. But I find that to be useful data that we did not have before.

+1.

All in one, as we can read with votes already posted :
1. 75% of istock contributors have a drop in their sales (independent and exclusive)
2. Only 3% of exclusive has'nt dropped at all.

Just for curiosity, maybe you could have put also an item with 'My income has increased (by about x%) and I am an independent'...  ;)

Great idea. It is a bit late in the game, but I just added the following 2 options anyway:

1 - My income has increased by 10% or more and I am an indepdendent
2 - My income has increased by 10% or more and I am exclusive with iStock

Unfortunately I could not put them at the top of the poll where they belong though as there is no option to change the order of things without disrupting the numbers.

I added them actually because perhaps there are people who are following this thread and haven't voted yet because they didn't fit into any of the existing categories. So now this gives them a chance to vote too.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2016, 10:03 by X9D7CE84A2B5Y »

Justanotherphotographer

« Reply #59 on: June 06, 2016, 10:12 »
0


The poll results do not show that anyone who voted has had an increase in income. It also doesn't give any indication of the size of their portfolios or that their portfolios have increased in size since 2012 for the people who voted. What data is your conclusions based upon?

Sorry, I meant "hasn't dropped", they could mean "stayed exactly the same to the cent", but I assumed increased.

My conclusion is based upon there not being any exclusives in 2012 with portfolios below a certain threshold, the threshold you need/ needed to pass to become exclusive and the ease of growing that portfolio in percentage terms compared to larger portfolios. I am basing that on how percentages work.
 


« Reply #60 on: June 06, 2016, 10:24 »
0


The poll results do not show that anyone who voted has had an increase in income. It also doesn't give any indication of the size of their portfolios or that their portfolios have increased in size since 2012 for the people who voted. What data is your conclusions based upon?

Sorry, I meant "hasn't dropped", they could mean "stayed exactly the same to the cent", but I assumed increased.

My conclusion is based upon there not being any exclusives in 2012 with portfolios below a certain threshold, the threshold you need/ needed to pass to become exclusive and the ease of growing that portfolio in percentage terms compared to larger portfolios. I am basing that on how percentages work.

With the 2 new voting options I added, perhaps we will get some feedback from people who have seen at least a 10% increase in income since 2012.

« Reply #61 on: June 06, 2016, 10:36 »
0
I believe i was exclusive for most of 2012 and then went indie so my drop was huge. There didn't seem to be an option for that on the poll but i put over 80% drop...

« Reply #62 on: June 06, 2016, 10:38 »
0
Quote

With the 2 new voting options I added, perhaps we will get some feedback from people who have seen at least a 10% increase in income since 2012.

Well done! Now let's see...

« Reply #63 on: June 06, 2016, 10:56 »
0
I believe i was exclusive for most of 2012 and then went indie so my drop was huge. There didn't seem to be an option for that on the poll but i put over 80% drop...

Understood and thank you for voting.

Since you voted already I don't think you can change your vote, but perhaps the best thing to have done would have been to take your first month's income as an indie (after dropping your crown) and then calculated your percentage of income drop based upon your last month's income total.

Just for the record, how much of a percentage drop would that be?

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #64 on: June 06, 2016, 11:04 »
0
It is very obvious that Istock is not promoting exclusive files. Why pay 2.5$ /0.75$  if you can do with much less (same with credits), specially if there are similar files on both champs so the customer doesn't need to look elsewhere. Let me give you another hint on why quality doesn't matter at all for them. In my last uploads I had most images selected as regular exclusive files, some as E+ and some as Main.........guess which of them appear first when I look for my portfolio in Best Match........the bests with a big Plus sign on it.....wrong! Those selected as Main get to the front page before any sale that bumps them up and they also stay on the privileged position for longer......

Although at one time, I'm sure it was said that some exclusive files would be put into Main on acceptance, the last time I read about it happening, it was apparently a mistake and the person was told it shouldn't have happened.

I see no evidence that sales are boosting files. Indeed, the curse of the download might still be in play (on a tiny sample).
Later: tried some other searches and it's 'inconsistent'.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2016, 13:09 by ShadySue »

« Reply #65 on: June 06, 2016, 17:09 »
+6
Hope those who were not in iStock before 2012 are not voting.  I noticed 26 have reported their income has not dropped at all.  That's hard to believe.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2016, 17:14 by Digital66 »

« Reply #66 on: June 06, 2016, 22:18 »
0

When you include your iStock totals, are you adding in subs and PP?  I have been. If I was to only go by blue line DLs then I've gone from 4-5k/month  to only around $ 300/month on IS.  Which would put IS on the lowest tier for me.

If just the blue, I fluctuate today between $150 & $200.  2-3 years ago I was making about $400 a month on blue before TS was introduced. Then income slowly went down, then started to climb up a little in the last year with subs and Getty.  Today the "green and gray bars" usually add up to roughly $200 more each month.  I've had a few months of late where I've gotten some big bumps in sales.     

Thanks for the explanation.   I wonder if my extreme drops are from not branching into video.  Seems like the still photogs like yourself that also added video have not fallen so bad.

« Reply #67 on: June 06, 2016, 22:23 »
+1
Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.

Another thing I noticed over the last 18 months is how the best match on iStock hasn't really changed much at all. And what the best match mainly has been driving for the last 1.5 years is the newer content uploaded by exclusives and independents, plus some of the older stuff put up by exclusives which hasn't sold much in the past.

Seemingly, exclusives are no longer investing as much as they did in the past to create their new content, knowing that iStock has turned mainly into a low-cost subscription priced site. This means that the older exclusive content is probably much better quality than the newer exclusive content, if in fact many of the exclusives have even continued to upload at all. The current best match algorithm is also not showing the older and best selling exclusive content at the top of the search results, which results in minimal sales to exclusives of their high quality best sellers from the past that they spent more money to create.

So what does this all really mean for contributors?

In my opinion it means that iStock is discouraging buyers from easily finding the more expensive, high quality exclusive content and instead putting a mix of new, lower quality and lower cost indy content, with some older, poorer selling exclusive content which isn't going to interest buyers much anyway. And when the buyers see mainly a mix of lower quality pictures from the indies and exclusives together, they probably buy more of the indy stuff because quality of the two groups will be about equal and yet the indy stuff sells for only 1/3 the price.

I am not saying iStock is necessarily doing this consciously to make more money because of the fact they have a lower payout on the indy stuff. But maybe they are truly trying to promote the older content that hasn't sold much yet and to give the new stuff a bigger chance too.

But if buyers are mainly buying the cheaper priced indy pictures, rather than the higher cost exclusive pictures, it means the indys might not be seeing a drop income and the exclusives could be seeing huge drops of over 50% in income as the poll also has also shown us with 24 exclusives saying their income has fallen by 50% or more and only 14 independents saying their income has dropped as much too.

I don't know how you're coming to these conclusions.  As I read the poll, the indies that lost 50% or more are the largest group.

« Reply #68 on: June 06, 2016, 23:07 »
0
Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.

Another thing I noticed over the last 18 months is how the best match on iStock hasn't really changed much at all. And what the best match mainly has been driving for the last 1.5 years is the newer content uploaded by exclusives and independents, plus some of the older stuff put up by exclusives which hasn't sold much in the past.

Seemingly, exclusives are no longer investing as much as they did in the past to create their new content, knowing that iStock has turned mainly into a low-cost subscription priced site. This means that the older exclusive content is probably much better quality than the newer exclusive content, if in fact many of the exclusives have even continued to upload at all. The current best match algorithm is also not showing the older and best selling exclusive content at the top of the search results, which results in minimal sales to exclusives of their high quality best sellers from the past that they spent more money to create.

So what does this all really mean for contributors?

In my opinion it means that iStock is discouraging buyers from easily finding the more expensive, high quality exclusive content and instead putting a mix of new, lower quality and lower cost indy content, with some older, poorer selling exclusive content which isn't going to interest buyers much anyway. And when the buyers see mainly a mix of lower quality pictures from the indies and exclusives together, they probably buy more of the indy stuff because quality of the two groups will be about equal and yet the indy stuff sells for only 1/3 the price.

I am not saying iStock is necessarily doing this consciously to make more money because of the fact they have a lower payout on the indy stuff. But maybe they are truly trying to promote the older content that hasn't sold much yet and to give the new stuff a bigger chance too.

But if buyers are mainly buying the cheaper priced indy pictures, rather than the higher cost exclusive pictures, it means the indys might not be seeing a drop income and the exclusives could be seeing huge drops of over 50% in income as the poll also has also shown us with 24 exclusives saying their income has fallen by 50% or more and only 14 independents saying their income has dropped as much too.

I don't know how you're coming to these conclusions.  As I read the poll, the indies that lost 50% or more are the largest group.

Yes, largest group, but similar in size to the number of indies who didn't lose anything. You now have 24 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012. Second largest group. Yet only 3 exclusives say that their income hasn't gone down over the same period of time. Those 3 exclusives are one of the smallest groups and is only 10% of the number of indies who haven't lost any income. Simple math.

« Reply #69 on: June 06, 2016, 23:43 »
+2
According to Moody's Financial Reports (generally published in September) iStock had gross revenue of about $350 million back in 2011/2.  It started to fall, and has fallen every year since then.  The last report (which included comments from Getty) said gross revenue had dropped to $250 million, and was still falling but at a lower rate.

So gross revenue (and hence sales) has fallen by about a third.

Over the same period there have been shifts in the best match to gradually demote exclusive files and give more sales to non-exclusives (presumably in a attempt to preserve profits by selling more of the higher margin non-exclusive files and less of the exclusive files).

So taking the best match shifts into account, it's logical to assume that exclusive incomes should have dropped by 30% or more over that period (all other things being equal), and it's quite reasonable to expect to see large numbers of exclusives showing declines in the 50% area.

And, given the best match shifts giving favor to non-exclusive files, it's also quite reasonable to expect to see large numbers of non-exclusives reporting little or no change to incomes over the same period.

Of course to give some credit to Getty, they mirrored most of the exclusive files over on the Getty main site during this period, so I assume they were trying to compensate for lost income by generating additional income from Getty main site sales.

« Reply #70 on: June 07, 2016, 00:09 »
+1
According to Moody's Financial Reports (generally published in September) iStock had gross revenue of about $350 million back in 2011/2.  It started to fall, and has fallen every year since then.  The last report (which included comments from Getty) said gross revenue had dropped to $250 million, and was still falling but at a lower rate.

So gross revenue (and hence sales) has fallen by about a third.

Over the same period there have been shifts in the best match to gradually demote exclusive files and give more sales to non-exclusives (presumably in a attempt to preserve profits by selling more of the higher margin non-exclusive files and less of the exclusive files).

So taking the best match shifts into account, it's logical to assume that exclusive incomes should have dropped by 30% or more over that period (all other things being equal), and it's quite reasonable to expect to see large numbers of exclusives showing declines in the 50% area.

And, given the best match shifts giving favor to non-exclusive files, it's also quite reasonable to expect to see large numbers of non-exclusives reporting little or no change to incomes over the same period.

Of course to give some credit to Getty, they mirrored most of the exclusive files over on the Getty main site during this period, so I assume they were trying to compensate for lost income by generating additional income from Getty main site sales.

Good analysis. Confirms the results of this poll as well as the theories added by the OP.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #71 on: June 07, 2016, 03:54 »
0
Of course to give some credit to Getty, they mirrored most of the exclusive files over on the Getty main site during this period,
By no means 'most' exclusive files have been mirrored*. Editorial was mirrored (but as 'unreleased', not as 'Editorial') then very quickly removed on an extremely spurious excuse (and may, or may not, be restored soon-ish).
For a while, exclusives could nominate files for promotion to S+/mirroring, but for example in my case, as a long-standing 'big name' in my main field (who previously was with one of the specialist agencies and marketed on his own, according to credits) suddenly put his back catalogue of around 15k files onto the micros, there wasn't much point to make my own files even more expensive on iStock than his were as an indie. Some people took the opportunity to promote lots of images, others didn't. It is true that we were encouraged to do so for a while, on the grounds that buyers wanted to pay more (!?), then suddenly the same buyers seemed only to want subs.
I think it was when subs were introduced (but might have been at a different date), exclusives stopped having the ability to promote directly, but can nominate files for consideration S+/Getty mirroring, since when it's become more and more difficult to get files 'promoted' - and in some cases, it seems surprisingly 'random'. Even the big budget people shooters don't get files promoted as much as they'd expect/hope for (I know my place!)

Quote
so I assume they were trying to compensate for lost income by generating additional income from Getty main site sales.
I guess they are getting additional income, as they get 80% of Getty sales, but also some Getty sales are ridiculously small, even compared to subs.
I've previously been lucky on some occasions to get big value sales (for example, one person actually paid $250 for an isolated gift bow, which I bought '3 for 1' in a pound shop, of which I got $50), but these are getting fewer, for a lot of people who report. I've also had net sales as low as 22c and 23c via Getty, and  again these seem to be more common for the people reporting.
Interestingly (to me, at least!), although I have a tiny presence on Getty, quite often the files which sell - at whatever price point - have no sales on iS.

Also remember that all files, in cluding indie, are available to a 'selection' of Getty buyers via the GettyPlus scheme. Again, previously I had a few good sales from that scheme, but now they are mostly low-value, and that has also been echoed by others.

* exclusive video files are all mirrored, providing the connector is working.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2016, 07:27 by ShadySue »

« Reply #72 on: June 07, 2016, 05:01 »
0
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Some may have started doing video to offset image income declines.  So while they may have serious declines in images, they make it up with video.  Just a theory.

I am an example of this. Exclusive on both stills and video. Last month was my BME (previous one was March 2016) on total iStock income. I am submitting more video since last 2 years. The GI income from mirrored stills/videos is balancing and even improving a lot recently.

We're talking about 4-digit numbers by the way. Just to give you an impression.

« Reply #73 on: June 07, 2016, 06:10 »
0
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Some may have started doing video to offset image income declines.  So while they may have serious declines in images, they make it up with video.  Just a theory.

I am an example of this. Exclusive on both stills and video. Last month was my BME (previous one was March 2016) on total iStock income. I am submitting more video since last 2 years. The GI income from mirrored stills/videos is balancing and even improving a lot recently.

We're talking about 4-digit numbers by the way. Just to give you an impression.

Thank you for the data. Two questions please:

1 - What year did you first start uploading to iStock as an exclusive? Was it around 2010?
2 - Have you continued to upload regularly since you became exclusive with iStock?
« Last Edit: June 07, 2016, 06:13 by X9D7CE84A2B5Y »

« Reply #74 on: June 07, 2016, 06:21 »
0
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Some may have started doing video to offset image income declines.  So while they may have serious declines in images, they make it up with video.  Just a theory.

I am an example of this. Exclusive on both stills and video. Last month was my BME (previous one was March 2016) on total iStock income. I am submitting more video since last 2 years. The GI income from mirrored stills/videos is balancing and even improving a lot recently.

We're talking about 4-digit numbers by the way. Just to give you an impression.

Thank you for the data. Two questions please:

1 - What year did you first start uploading to iStock as an exclusive? Was it around 2010?
2 - Have you continued to upload regularly since you became exclusive with iStock?

1- Yes, I started in January 2010.
2- Yes, I am not the biggest uploader but I can say that it's been regular without any long breaks.


 

Related Topics

  Subject / Started by Replies Last post
43 Replies
14493 Views
Last post May 18, 2012, 17:50
by djpadavona
36 Replies
14113 Views
Last post September 08, 2012, 18:25
by luissantos84
3 Replies
2576 Views
Last post March 20, 2013, 03:26
by gillian vann
13 Replies
6852 Views
Last post June 07, 2016, 06:43
by Anyka
15 Replies
8162 Views
Last post October 24, 2020, 04:03
by Free_Soul

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors